


Game NOT over

by Bacner



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: AU - Canon Divergence, Babysitting, Chaos, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Xibalba - Freeform, established relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: Rebecca Hoover is dead. Enter some mystical powers ready to deal...





	Game NOT over

…And so, Rebecca Hoover found herself to be dead. Like, really dead, stuck in a great darkness with… no, actually without any wailing, or gnashing of teeth, or any sounds at all, really. She could hear – or so she thought – some sort of a fluttering sound overhead; she also could hear – or so she thought, again – some moaning at an even greater distance; but other than that? Nothing. Scary, yes, but not exactly punishing here, no.

Of course, on some level at least, the mere fact of darkness was bad enough – Rebecca hated it ever since she had been put into an insane asylum for mutants and during her brief incarceration by Reeva her views on darkness and confined quarters, i.e. claustrophobia) didn’t improve. Neither did her mental state, but still…

“Hello!” she called out, gamely. “Is there anyone?”

“Anyone? Sure!” came back the echoing reply, and a torch-like flame illuminated the darkness, revealing two other people, a man and a woman, grown-ups, but still younger than Rebecca’s parents had ever been, (in her memory, at least).

“So, what are you doing here?” the woman asked cheerfully, albeit with a slight foreign accent, maybe Spanish, (though more like the Spanish of Mexico City rather than that of Barcelona, for example). “Young lady, what is your name?”

“My name is Rebecca,” Rebecca implied, doing her best not to curtsy slightly – she was not that sort of a girl – while looking around. “What is this place?”

“Xibalba,” the man replied. Unlike his companion, he looked like a typical Anglo-American, and his English did not have any sort of an accent. “So, are you morally ambiguous?”

“Sure!” Rebecca replied brightly.

“Homicidally insane?” the woman added, just as brightly.

“Yeah,” Rebecca winced, before adding, in a more subdued manner, “I didn’t mean to…”

“Didn’t mean to what, young lady? Kill the Inner Circle and everyone else who would get in your way?” Rebecca’s new interlocutors towered over her, and she, when she felt for her powers, could not find them.

“Yes, no, young lady,” the woman’s voice, and facial expressions, were firm, but sympathetic. “Once you’re dead, you usually don’t have any powers, whether you’re a mutant or anything else. Sorry about that.”

“No problem, not your fault,” Rebecca automatically replied, remembered that she was rude, and a villain, and an independent, and a teenager, and turned red. “What will happen to me now?”

“I don’t know – we don’t know,” the man replied once again, (maybe they took turns?). “Young lady, what do you think should happen to you?”

Rebecca looked down on the ground; in the light of the torch, she could see that she was standing on a floor of a cave…but other than that, there were no clues as to what her reply should be.

“Do you know as to why you’re here?” the woman asked, in a kinder voice than her companion did. “Here means ‘here’, by the way.”

“…Yes,” Rebecca dragged the words out of her throat. “If I, if I had listened to Andy, followed his plan, then maybe, maybe…”

“Maybe what?” the man asked, as he put his hand down – and it was heavy – onto Rebecca’s shoulders. “Please finish.”

“Maybe nothing!” Rebecca snapped. “Reeva and the rest of the Inner Circle would probably never let us have peace, and as for Andy’s family and the rest of the Mutant Underground – they are the same as the Inner Circle is, just are milder, they just disagree about the means, nothing else…”

“Maybe you’re right,” came the reply, “but still, regardless – did you have to kill all of them? Even Lorna, who was more disposed towards you of them all, Andy Strucker aside?”

“No?” Rebecca again tried to find something honestly fascinating on the cave’s rocky floor. There was nothing, though the stone that made it was so smooth that it was mirror-like, so that Rebecca could see something in its depths…

‘It’ proved to be the raid of the Inner Circle, led by Reeva, (but with Lorna and Andy doing all of the hard work, let us be honest), to release all of the imprisoned and captured mutants in the U.S. by destroying the control site of the power-controlling collars with their powers…

It was pain. It was death. It was destruction. It was chaos. It was everything that Rebecca dreamed about during her dark nights (and days) in the asylum, and she was not even there, not anymore. “What have I done?” she whispered to no one in particular. “To Andy and Lorna, to others, to myself?”

“There are several… mmm… let’s call them principles, governing the universe – the multiverse, even,” the man spoke, quite kindly, actually. “Two of them are war and peace. Then there is good and bad, chaos and order – and then there are indifference and love. Want to bet as to which one runs your life, and which one – Andy’s?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Rebecca muttered, as she sank to the floor, (by sitting down upon it, not literally sinking into it, as if it was quicksand), still starring at the last images, of Andy and Lorna, standing (and/or floating) among all of the devastated machinery. “I didn’t mean to. I just- I wanted to be free, to be really free… I wanted Andy, he came for me, but if he is with me, then how can I be free?”

“You can’t,” came the patient, understanding, kindly reply. “Freedom is a power, a privilege, a responsibility. Like all of the above, it comes with a cost. Its’ cost is loneliness, and as someone who had experienced it, I can admit that it sucks. Love makes life better, you know? Two is better than one, and four-“

“Four?” Rebecca blinked. “Don’t you mean three?”

“Oh, don’t you start too!” the woman snapped. “Even I wasn’t that bad at your age!” She gestured, and in a distance Rebecca could see, briefly (or not so briefly) an ordinary, average apartment, where a young girl, (a preteen, no more than half of Rebecca’s own age), was babysitting her baby sibling, the emphasis here being on ‘baby’.

“Our eldest,” the man spoke fondly, “wonderful girl. Just as intelligent as her aunt is, but, unfortunately, she still has some adjustments to make in regards to being a big sister now. There’d been some…fall-out regarding the new baby, so yeah; Kara here is a bit touchy about it all.”

“Want a babysitter?” Rebecca asked despite her better intentions. Then again, she was dead, in an afterlife of some sort, so some self-preservation was probably useful here.

“Ah!” And here a glance was sharper, a flash of blue-white fire, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, “that’s an interesting question. Here is another: and what about you? What do you want? What do you need?”

“Andy,” Rebecca snapped before she could control herself. “He- came for me. No one ever did. Not my parents, certainly. There will be a pay-back-“ she tried to grin, it came across very sickly and crooked, certainly even – carnivorous. Clearly not friendly. “But Andy, Andy, yeah. He confuses me.”

“Welcome to the club,” muttered the woman – Kara? “We here in Xibalba often get confused about our opposite numbers,” as she leaned onto her companion’s shoulders. “Now, where were we?”

“Oh yes, we’re sending you back, for you to see what you can salvage for yourself and your love-life, your life, this time,” the man smiled, a trifle sharply, but still friendly-like, so Rebecca said nothing.

“In exchange for what? My soul?”

“You promised to babysit for us, remember?”

“…That’s it? What’s the catch?”

“You’ve never babysat before, have you?”

“…No. Only child. How bad is it?”

“You’ll learn. Enter ‘maniacal laughter’-“

“Dear, you’re upsetting her,” the woman – Kara? – gave her companion a light swat on the shoulder. “And Rebecca? Welcome to team Xibalba. You’ll like it here – we hope.”

“Okay,” Rebecca muttered, as the older woman helped her onto her feet. She looked around, and sure enough, there was a natural passageway leading upwards; the darkness had receded, and now Rebecca could see big beasts such as wolves and big cats, occasional bears and great apes and-

“Penguins?”

“Don’t ask,” the man rolled his eyes. “Union requirements.”

Rebecca blinked and nodded some really big bats flying overheads, their fur as black as mole-skin; and in the distance, she could see-

“Zombies? Really?”

“Also, don’t ask,” the man continued to grumble. “But – yes, good luck to you with your endeavours, in the affairs of the heart and otherwise-“

Rebecca realized that she could not meet his eyes; for some reason it hurt; it reminded her of home, of happier times when she was not so crazy, and mom-

And the woman – Kara? – ruffled her hair in a very motherly style. 

“I hate you,” Rebecca muttered. “Why can’t my life be normal?” Her brain caught up to her mouth and she facepalmed. 

“Normality is overrated,” the man’s voice didn’t sound pissed, more like amused, which was good, right?

And then he flicked Rebecca on the nose-

-and she sneezed and opened her eyes.

“What the,” Reeva sputtered, “what the-“

“Reeva!” Lorna admonished. “Language!”

“Hey!” Andy finally stopped gaping like a fish out of water. “Rebecca-“

“Yeah, I was dead, and then some supernatural entities from the land down under agreed that I should go back and participate in the world of the living some more,” Rebecca shrugged, as she climbed out of her own casket, very determinedly – now she hated dark and tight enclosed spaces even more than she did before.

“In exchange for what?” Reeva did not seem to believe Rebecca entirely-

“Babysitting,” Rebecca admitted slowly. “There’s a preteen girl and her baby sister-“

“Oh!” The other members of the Inner Circle spoke at once, as one. “You poor, innocent dear-“

“Hey! It won’t be that bad, will it?” Rebecca muttered, even more worried than she did before.

“We’ll let you learn on your own,” Andy patted Rebecca on one of her shoulders. (She still had two, just as she had only two arms – yet, thanks to someone). “Now want to go and celebrate your return with some take-out?”

“I thought that you’d never ask!” Rebecca’s brain caught-up with her mouth again and she turned red.

As the duo left, Reeva was back to gaping. “Wha, wha,” she tried to regain her footing amongst the Inner Circle members – again.

“Don’t bother,” Lorna told her wisely. “It’s easier when you don’t try to make sense of everything. Now let’s go and order our pizza.”

End


End file.
